With an aim of deafness-free Gujarat, an NGO Tara Foundation started Newborn Hearing Screen Centre. In last two years, the NGO has screened around 50,000 new norms of which 1,000 were found with hearing issues. As per estimate four in every 1,000 are suffering from profound hearing loss.

According to the doctor that kids those are admitted in NICU are the common prey to deafness. "It is important to have early detection for the overall development of the child. When a treatment stars early, the child can grow like a normal person. Now, the state government is doing implantation for free in children,," said Neeraj Suri, Cochlear Implant Surgeon, civil hospital, Gandhinagar.

During their screening, the surgeon has also found that in Muslim community occurrence of this disability is very high. "In Muslim community, due to marriages among cousins defective gene is inherited from each parent by the the child. That is the reason why we have set up a centre at the VS Hospital today," added the surgeon.

The centre at the VS Hospital, new Born Hearing Screening Centre will do screening of new born children in city for free of cost. If, needed the centre will assist for the implantation and other follow up.

Early detection at the centre for hearing ability can be done from new born to five years of age.

"Our aim is for deafness-free Gujarat and we are working on that direction. We should have more newborn hearing centres in every district and Tara foundation will make this possible. We are focusing more on tribal and rural areas as there is need of awareness," said Prakash Sanghvi, patron of the foundation.

The foundation is working from last 3 year in 9 Districts of Gujarat. In 2016 Tara foundation started first centre in Godhra Gujarat, they have two mobile centres also.